While we may disagree at what a public utility is (over here, it doesn’t have to be a monopoly, for instance. Our electricity is a public utility, and I can choose one of about six providers in my area), we do agree on the fundamentals.
However, over here, our internet is not tied to our phone rates. It’s a seperate service/bill. Dunno about over there. The telcos sell internet service both to the public ( http://www.verizon.net, http://public.pacbell.net/ etc) and to private ISPs…Private ISPs resell bandwidth downstream. Companies and public pay for that bandwidth to get on the internet…Google pays for it through whomever they get their service from, and I’m sure they’re like most companies in that the more bandwidth they use, the more they’re charged. So, the fight is really about whether or not telcos can tack on EXTRA surcharges to bigger companies, on top of the legitimate fees they’re already paying, simply because they’re big companies.
The tie-in is that the phone companies built the data networks as part of their overall communications networks. They do not finance the data networks separately from the phone networks. When one side of the business is sagging, they prop it up with income from another side, like any other business would do. The internet usage of the data network has to cover the cost of expansion. But beyond that, the telcos need to show a profit. That’s where I believe the gouging comes in, unfortunately, where they are trying to not only cover their costs, but make it pay quickly so that they are in profit sooner.
Let’s face it, in the end, all costs will trickle down to us users. I would rather see higher-end applications get the dedicated facilities so that the internet progresses, than to hold back progress of the net to the slowest denominator, and all under the false assumption that we’re keeping the internet cheap and ubiquitous for everyone.
Just a little news to put some things in perspective. I’m a Verizon customer, and have their fibre optic service (where I get about 12 T1’s worth of speed in the fibre coming into my house). Verizon is running fibre to the home in select cities on their own dollar. They ran the fibre down my alleyway, and a week later, I had them come out and run it to my house. It cost me nothing, not even a multi-year contract or anything.
Like some of its rivals, New York-based Verizon has turned to newer technologies such as wireless and the Internet to drive growth and to offset steady erosion in its traditional local phone business.
In the last three months of the year, company posted a net profit of $3.03 billion, or $1.08 a share, reversing a year-earlier loss of $1.5 billion, or 53 cents.
Quarterly revenue climbed 6.2 percent to $18.26 billion from $17.19 billion a year ago.
“Building on our excellent fourth-quarter and full-year results, our business fundamentals as we enter 2005 are the strongest they’ve been in years,” said Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon’s chief executive, in a statement.
It sounds like they’re doing ok, even with the network expansion they’re doing
Personally, I believe the internet has become it’s own creature - it is easily the bigest neural processor in this solar system - each connected computer or device is a cell and each of these cells has unlimited synapses - the human brain has 12 (16 for genuises) on top of this, a brain neuron can only fire - it’s binary, while internet neurons have, by virtue of having a whole human attached to them, an almost infinite range of responses to stimuli. Email alone is most probably sentient beyond our wildest imaginings. I very much doubt that it will allow itself to be attacked.
Mitch, I hope you are kidding around here, if not; well this could be a bigger problem than the crystal people.
If anybody is interested in the issues underlying the debate on net neutrality (and understand how that cartoon thing is spun), check out this primer by Ed Felton. Highly recommended.
Sorry, I think the argument glosses over too much, and I would not agree with some of the definitions/descriptions there.
For instance, he assumes that all ISPs are network providers. Not true. There are many ISPs, but few network providers. Many ISPs have no networks of their own at all, or only partial networks, either leasing facilities from the big network providers, or leasing them from intermediate bulk leasors.
Also, his arguments assume that ISPs don’t sell VoIP or VPN but are in competition with them. Not true. By rigging the discrimination rules as suggested, the ISP would be wrecking their own VoIP services.
Also also, his description of VPN as simply an application encryption scheme is incorrect. VPN is sold right now by ISPs as a way to tunnel through the network, providing higher reliablity to customers who pay extra for this service. Discriminating against all VPN as described would again have the ISP trashing its own VPN service.
The only thing I agree with in the paper is that the issue is complicated. When the network provider is also the ISP and also the VPN and VoIP provider, all his arguments cancel themselves out, as far as I can tell.
